So we arrived at the airport in Hanoi and tried to get into the city for as little as we could. An hour journey cost us less than 2 bucks!! when taxis usually go for $15. We first haggled with a taxi driver who we bartered down to 10 bucks then we got 10 mins down the road and he said you must pay an extra $20, Chris got majorly pissed off, told them to stop the car and grabbed me and got out by the side of the motorway in the middle of nowhere! haha the car drove off and we thought s*** what now. Luckily a taxi with one passenger already stopped and the passenger said get I. He couldn't speak English and we were driving thought the chaotic streets of Hanoi not knowing where we were going, hadn't even an idea of hotels or anything. The car stopped, the man got out and paid the taxi fair...about $15! for all of us, said nice to meet you and walked off. The taxi driver then hailed us another taxi and took us to the old quarter full of tourist places and hotels and that taxi was only like $2. It was crazy, just crazy. Our first bad experience of scanning, money driven people in our first taxi was immediately balanced out by our experience of kindness and generosity by the 2 guys in the second taxi. Was lovely, found a hotel in the old quarter where all the action is and got a cheapo room for $15. We went wandering around trying to find food about 12 and we were surprised by all the people that were still about. Sitting on tiny plastic stools eating, drinking, chattering away, motorbikes whizzing around offering all kinds of services…brothels/weed being a couple. Hanoi was definitely a BIG city, full to the brim with life but soooo much hassle from street vendors of everything. At first it was extremely exciting coming from sleepy Laos but by the third day of walking the city it began to get very tiresome, constant mess, hassle, honking, noise everything going on high speed all the time. We tried to get away from it all to a park but the moment we got our of our rickshaw it started to downpour so that was a plan failed! We book a tour to Halong Bay for 3 days and we were both very keen on seeing the ocean for the first time in weeks!